Craig Cefn Parc Conmen. #1 Grindell-Matthews

He made some valuable contributions to cinematography and wireless communication but, as his career faltered, he tried to con thousands of pounds out of the UK government by pretending to have invented a death-ray. He had also ‘invented’ a ‘sky projector’ which could project adverts, Batman-style, onto clouds. This was far from being a novel idea, and had already been used for pre-wireless over-the-horizon signalling in the 19th century. In some newspaper articles, the sky projector is (deliberately?) mistaken for the death-ray, because it looks more impressive. The death-ray itself looked no more threatening than an epidiascope. In demonstrations to military observers, he indeed seemed to be able to produce effects from a distance. Unfortunately, he gave the game away by giving demonstrations like the one below. Who then was ever going to believe that his ‘death-ray’ was not merely photo-cell triggering of preset events at the target location?